A “Female Demancipation” Alt-history Story
Author’s Note: This story uses the cliche of “Patient in an insane asylum gets tickled as a ‘treatment’,” but with a peculiar take of my own. It's also set in the late 1940s of the alternate history, rather than in the 1950s like most of my other Demancipation stories.
Truda was straitjacketed and barefoot when they brought her into the asylum’s treatment chamber. She glared at the tickle-stocks waiting for her.
Sit down and take our medicine, a voice in her head told her.
That was Lindie, a name that Truda had dropped into the mud, along with her slave collar, when she had become Sturmfrau Truda Seven of the 1092 Valkyrie Korps. In the last, losing months of the war, the Reich had formed wonder-units of psychically gifted women in an attempt to turn the tide. But the Reich had fallen, Hitler was dead, and the war was over.
It’s over, Lindie said. We should surrender too.
“Never!” Truda snarled at her former self.
Two American women guided Truda to the stocks and began to secure her, under the eye of Eugene Gardner, the American corpsman in charge of her treatment. Like Truda, the American women both wore slave collars. The Americans had instituted female Demancipation in 1920, and they had collared Truda and the other Valkyries after Odinführer Leopold Weiss surrendered their squadron.
For that matter, Germany had enacted Demancipation two years before the Americans, and most of the rest of the world had passed their own versions by 1922. Soviet Russia was the chief exception, with its ideology of Socialism-Feminism. Even the Nazi Party, despite its official platform of National Feminism, had chosen to continue Demancipation once it had come into power. The Party promised to emancipate German women in the future, after they had become pure and strong enough to stand the strain of freedom. But in the meantime the slogan would be Kragen, Küche, Kirche – Collar, Kitchen, Church – since the thickening psychic atmosphere of the 20th century would drive free women mad.
We were driven mad, Lindie said. We saw and heard things that weren’t there, and we did terrible things without realizing it.
“I am not mad!” Truda said.
“You’re getting better,” Corpsman Eugene said as he checked her bonds. “But you have a way to go, yet.” He took a seat in front of Truda’s vulnerable soles and prepared for the session: Setting out implements, wiping her feet clean with a wet washcloth, and applying the US Army’s standard lotion. “This time I’m going to start on the count of three. Ready? One… Two… Three!”
Truda shrieked with laughter as she felt the fingers dig into her right foot. A moment later, a little plastic rake ran down her left sole, reversing course when it reach the heel, and reversing course again when it reached her toes. Up and down it ran, up and down to tease all the sensitive nerve endings in its path.
Inside her, Lindie was grinning and giggling, blissfully excited. She was enjoying this, the traitoress!
“You’re enjoying this,” Corpsman Eugene said in an unconscious echo. “Aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question.
“No!” Trudi lied “I haha! I hate this heeheehee! Stohaha stop it at once! Heehahaheehee!”
Corpsman Eugene just smiled at her, his hands not pausing for even an instant as they continued the tickle tickle tickle of Truda’s helpless feet.
It felt good. That was the problem: It did feel good. It felt good despite the way it softened Truda’s stiffness, her resistance. It felt good because of the way it relaxed that uncomfortable stiffness. It felt good when the little plastic rake ran back and forth across the balls of her feet. It felt good when something metal-cold and polished-slick made circling and spiraling patterns on her arches, first in her left foot, and then in her right. It felt good when wiggling fingers squirmed between her toes, sending squirming tickles into those toes and down into her feet as well. It felt good as the vigorous tickling continued, one implement replacing another, forcing Truda to laugh and laugh. It felt good as Truda squirmed, as the tickling made her squirm in her straitjacket. She couldn’t do anything but squirm and laugh, with her body strapped down on the reclining bench and her feet locked in the stocks. Her bare feet, sensitive and vulnerable, subjected by her captor’s orders to being tickled, tickled, and tickled.
It couldn’t go on forever. It didn’t go on forever. In fact, it stopped after ten minutes. Truda had been deliberately placed so she couldn’t see either the clock or the timer – that was part of the therapy. But she’d been informed, beforehand, that the first part of the hour-long session would last just ten minutes. That was part of the therapy too.
One of the American slave women – Nancy – gave Truda a sip of water and brushed loose hairs from her eyes. The other had left for other duties. The Americans were applying the same therapy to her sister-Valkyries, and Truda could hear their laughter, faintly, through the asylum’s walls.
No! Not ‘therapy,’ Truda told herself fiercely, torment! A dangerous torment because it felt so good, so pleasing, so seductive as it wore them down.
Well, it certainly is seductive, Lindie said cheerfully. Our new master knows his stuff.
“Shut up!” Truda told her. She spoke aloud, and Mas– Corpsman Eugene gave her a look.
“I didn’t say anything,” he told her as handed his water glass back to Nancy. “Time to begin again. Ready? Now.”
The new tickle came, slow and gentle. A soft brush painted long strokes up and down Truda’s right sole. It wasn’t exciting, the way the previous tickle had been. It was almost soothing, with just a little tease, just a little squirm, just a little tickle mixed in. Not enough tickle to force giggles. And not enough to distract Truda from her thoughts, from coming to the conclusion that Lindie was right: Corpsman Eugene did know his stuff.
She was right about the other point, as well. Corpsman Eugene was technically ‘Master’ Eugene, her legal owner for this month.
That had started in the last six months of their two year captivity. The women had been moved from their prison camp to an asylum taken over by the American occupation. There, they’d been informed that with the Valkyrie unit officially disbanded, they were no longer war prisoners. That they were now female civilians, subject to the Demancipation laws. They then had been made to strip nude and sent, one by one, to be auctioned off to the American soldiers who now staffed the asylum. The auction was then repeated on the following month and again each month thereafter. Usually a woman would end up in the hands of a different man each month, but not always. Mas– Corpsman Eugene, for example, had won the past two auctions for Truda.
Now three quick, light tickle-flicks ran across Truda’s right foot, making both Lindie and Truda go eep! Corpsman Eugene –
Master Eugene, Lindie insisted.
– then switched to tickle-painting Truda’s left sole. Up and down the brush ran, up and down, soft and gentle, teasing and tickling, while her right sole still tingled. A minute passed, and then the left sole received the three crosswise strokes, quick and squirmy. Corpsman Eugene gave Truda a nod, and the soft brush returned to her right sole, running slowly up and down.
The pattern repeated, until Lindie began to grin and Truda began to squirm. Part of that squirm was in anticipation of the three quick tickles, but more than half came from the slow brushing. The pattern repeated, minute after minute, switch after switch, as the gentle full-sole tickle was applied to each of Truda’s feet in turn, punctuated by the three quick eep!-provoking strokes.
Truda lost track of the minutes and the switches. She was simply aware of the soft lick of the brush. Soft and lazy, but just a little too exciting to let her relax, even without the three strokes of the sole-switch at the end of each minute. Then she caught herself regretting when the brush stopped tickling her right foot, even as her left sole welcomed the renewed touch.
Mmmm, Lindie purred. Eeep! Heeheeheehee! Ask Master Eugene to keep going. This is good!
Truda answered, speaking aloud before she could catch herself. “No, I will not ask for more of that brush.”
“That’s just as well,” Mas– Corpsman Eugene told her. “I’m finished with the brush. However…” He reached out with both hands, and Truda felt his fingers do a tickle-dance on both her soles at once.
“Eeep! Heehee Hahahaha!” Truda laughed as the irresistible, wonderful tickle-sensation sank into her feet and ran up her legs to fill her whole body. She twisted in her straps and straitjacket, craving the tickle even as it made her struggle. Then the tickle ended, after less than a dozen seconds.
That was very good! Lindie said. Too bad it ended so quickly.
Truda would not admit to feeling disappointment at the tickle’s end. She would not.
Corpsman Eugene stood and held out the water glass, with its straw. “Time for another sip of water, and a minute to catch your breath,” he said. “After that, you’ll have ten minutes left in this session.”
Too bad it isn’t fifteen minutes, Lindie said.
“I’ll give you another count of three,” Corpsman Eugene said as he sat back down. “One… Two… Three!”
A new tickle started, quick-tempoed and exciting. Truda laughed and squirmed as she felt the combination of fingers and implements twirling and dancing on her soles. She couldn’t keep from laughing and squirming. The tickling reached out to cover every bit of both her soles, and Truda struggled desperately not to enjoy it.
“One more thing,” Truda heard from beyond the happiness of her feet. “Dr. Goldberg has authorized three sessions each day for you, instead of just one.”
“Oh!” Lindie said aloud. “Heehee hahaha hee! That’s heehee That’s good news! Hahahaha!”
With an effort, Truda pushed Lindie back under. She was Sturmfrau Truda Seven of the 1092 Valkyrie Korps, and stronger-minded than any slave woman! But ‘Truda’ felt like a mask now; a mask being worn away by the American’s daily tickle-sessions. When the mask was gone, the sane woman underneath it would be left, for sanity was always stronger than madness. And that sane woman would be slave woman Lindie.
Heehee haha! I told you so! Lindie said. Heeheehee hahaheeee! she laughed, as Master Eugene delivered the delightful medicine of his tickling.